The United States is a rather unique country in the world in that, to my knowledge, it's pretty much the only country, at least when considering all free democratic countries, where the police just routinely and automatically demand ID from pretty much everybody they encounter and interact with. And this is not restricted to just some states, or some parts of the country: It's exactly the same everywhere in the gigantic country, regardless of state, regardless of local culture, regardless of which political party is running the state or the city where it's happening.
When the situation is such that demanding ID (at the threat of arrest) cannot be done lawfully (because the person is not suspected of any crime), in a small minority of cases the police officer might ask only once and perhaps even outright say that he's just asking consensually and that it's completely ok if the person refuses. However, in the vast, vast majority of such cases the officer will keep insisting, demanding the ID at a minimum a half dozen times (even when he has no lawful right to do so).
Sometimes it's so bad and so egregious that when the police officer arrives to a scene, the very first thing he says to the "suspect" there is to ask for ID. Not even a "hello", not introducing himself, not asking what the person is doing, not explaining why he is there, nothing. Just outright the first words that come of the officer's mouth are asking for ID. Yes, as incredible as it might sound, that happens. There are many video examples of this.
Invariably, when a police officer does that, he is of the type who will be extremely insistent on getting the ID (even when he doesn't have a lawful reason to do so) and will ask dozens of times if needed. I have yet to see a single counter-example.
I do not know of any other free democratic country where the police behaves like this. There might be, but at least as of writing this I am not aware of any. It certainly doesn't happen in my country. Here the police does not automatically ask for people's IDs. They almost never ask for anybody's ID (who they haven't outright arrested), unless the situation actually warrants it and there's an actual logical reason for it. (Traffic stops are a special case, of course, but that's to be expected.)
Consider a particularly egregious case I stumbled across on YouTube: Putting aside what the video is actually about, consider the interaction that the police officer has with the guy at the very beginning of the video.
The officer tells to the guy:
"Do you have an ID bro? You don't? What's your name?", and
"I have a lawful reason to stop you because we got a dispatch that matches your description", and
"Listen to me, I have a lawful reason to stop you and talk to you, you have a lawful reason to identify yourself to me. If you don't want to identify yourself to me I will take you to jail for concealing your identity."
Is he suspecting the guy of some kind of crime? This is a case of assault, so was the officer suspecting him to be the perpetrator of the assault, and thus demanding his ID and threatening to take him to jail if he refuses to identify?
Nope. Get this: The officer was suspecting this guy of being the victim of the assault.
Not only is he verbally aggressively demanding this suspected victim's ID, but in fact threatening him with jail if he refuses. He is threatening the victim of an assault with jail. He is treating this victim as if he was a criminal.
That's absolutely insane. And it just goes to show how bad the "ID fetish" situation is in the United States.
Comments
Post a Comment